Goal: To make wedding rings more fun and more affordable with a 3-month, interest-free payment option.

For co-founders Johnathan Ruggiero and Michelle Luchese, Manly Bands is a labor of love. The couple was in the process of planning their wedding when they encountered some bumps in the road trying to find John’s wedding band.

“It just seemed like a difficult and annoying process,” Luchese said. “We just wanted to make it happier. We had enough stress with the wedding; this part is supposed to be fun.”

Both Ruggiero and Luchese have an entrepreneurial background and experience in the e-commerce space, so they put together a business plan. That plan eventually became Manly Bands.

The company had two primary missions: offer excellent customer service and make unique wedding rings that men would actually want to put on their finger.

“I really wanted to be excited about my wedding band,” Ruggiero said.

“Why does it have to be a boring gold band?” added Luchese. “Let’s make it interesting. Let’s make it affordable.”

Manly Bands’ main demographic of shoppers is young, budget-conscious couples. Since they’ve already spent a lot of money on their wedding, their remaining cash flow can be limited. Giving them the option to pay for the groom’s wedding band over three, interest-free payments just made sense, so they began offering Affirm’s low average order value (AOV) product to their customers

AffirmGo is a perfect match for Manly Bands’ customers

“The integrations team was great. They set everything up for us,” Ruggiero said. “We work with a lot of companies that integrate with Shopify, and Affirm started up much faster than any of the others.”

In took only two days to implement Affirm while matching Manly Bands’ style and theme.

“And people understood it,” Luchese said. “All the details were right there. We didn’t have to write a bunch of FAQs to explain it.”

Wedding planning can be overwhelming, so making it easy to buy a ring for the groom is one less thing to worry about. “Affirm makes everything easily digestible,” she added. “Everything is put together really well.”

Manly Bands’ typical order values are between $150-$160, making AffirmGo a perfect fit. So they were excited to see that average order values with Affirm are 62 percent higher. Better yet, they saw a 17 percent increase in their sales conversion rate.

“Affirm allowed us to open up the possibilities of selling more expensive rings to people who might not have the cash flow to do so normally,” said Ruggiero.

It’s also a brand discovery tool—not just another payment option

Affirm has also become a powerful discovery tool for Manly Bands. Featuring Manly Bands on Affirm’s offers page has referred over 1,000 unique visitors to Manly Bands’ site in just two months. And 23 percent of Affirm orders with Manly Bands have come from previous Affirm users.

Ruggiero and Luchese may not have gotten what they wanted when they were looking for John’s wedding band. But with Affirm, they got more than they hoped for. Not only were they able to make unique wedding bands even more affordable, but they also got new, quality customers just from partnering with Affirm.

About the Author

Jesse is a graduate from the University of Michigan with a degree in neuroscience and a passion for writing. She uses both skills to tackle financial technology. Jesse was born and bred in the Bay Area and has watched as technology companies came to flourish in San Francisco. She is excited to be part of one that focuses on helping people make better financial choices.